


Rules for the Apocalypse

by calathea



Category: I Want To Go Home! - Korman
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-29
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike & Rudy versus a horde of the living dead.</p><p>Update December 2016: I have abandoned this work, although I did add an epilogue that I apparently wrote at some point for this story. I do not plan to continue this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mike and Rudy

"Quick! Get the boat untied!" yelled Mike, grabbing a wooden oar from the dock and taking a swing at the figure shuffling slowly towards him along the shore.

Rudy, unwontedly obedient, was already fumbling with the ropes.

Mike swung his oar again and connected this time with a dull thud. The zombie stumbled, then dragged itself mostly upright again and moaned. "Oh my god, why won't you stay down?" Mike said, swinging again. He missed this time and the momentum sent him spinning in a circle. The oar slipped out of his hand and flew, to Mike's amazement, on the perfect trajectory to impale the zombie limping towards him. The zombie fell over onto his back and lay there, flailing its limbs pathetically, like a bug on a pin.

"Ew," said Rudy, who had finally freed the boat and had jumped aboard to start the engine. "Come on, get in."

Mike shook himself free of his morbid fascination with the way blood was soaking into the zombie's camp counsellor uniform and dribbling out of its slack mouth. "Coming," he said. "Yeah, I'm coming."

He hopped into the boat, and Rudy pushed off from the dock and started them moving towards the distant shore of Camp Algonkian Island.

Mike scrambled into the seat facing Rudy, his back to the island.

They were silent for a moment.

"Who knew we'd run _to_ camp one day," said Mike, at last, with a weak smile. Rudy shrugged, but said nothing.

Over Rudy's shoulder, Mike could see that the original zombie was still thrashing on the ground, pawing fruitlessly at the oar protruding from his chest. It had been joined by others, their cheerful camp uniforms an obscene contrast to their dead grey skin. He shuddered, and looked away. Rudy reached out and touched Mike's knee with his free hand, which was a lot more comforting than Mike would have expected.

They were about halfway across the water now, and Rudy was scanning the shoreline of the island, Mike guessed for signs of life. Unlife. Whatever. Back on the dock, zombies were milling about purposelessly, the odd moaning noise they made echoing across the water.

"We're sure they can't swim, right?" said Mike, anxiously, as one or two of them approached the end of the dock.

"The water's too deep for them to walk across and flows too fast for them to just drift to the shore. They're dead so they have a tendency to float, anyway, and they certainly can't swim. My dad thinks they might be averse to water in general, though of course his empirical tests are limited," Rudy said. "Besides, they'll forget we're here once we're out of sight."

Mike nodded, but gasped all the same when one of the zombies took the final step off the dock and splashed into the water. It bobbed to the surface immediately, and though it thrashed about, after only a few seconds it was caught by the currents and drifted away, still moaning, down the fast-moving river and away from the island. None of the other zombies seemed inclined to go into the water, but just eddied about in a shifting, moaning mass on the dock.

"Get ready to jump out and pull the boat up onto the beach," Rudy said, as they approached the island, and Mike nodded.

"You're sure there's nobody here?" Mike said, minutes later, as they moved the boat high up on the tiny beach, out of sight of anyone on the shore of the mainland.

Rudy nodded, but Mike noticed the first thing he pulled out of the boat was his shotgun. "This is the caretaker's boat, so he's over there somewhere," he said. "And you saw the camp staff."

Mike shuddered again. "We should check, though, right?" he said.

"Yeah," said Rudy, hefting the shotgun again. "We'll sweep the island. It shouldn't take too long. Plus, it's not like they understand stealth. If they're here, we'll hear them."

They checked the boathouse first, and then the sports equipment building. Both were empty, pristine and neat in anticipation of this year's campers arriving. Mike picked up a baseball bat from a box that they found, just in case, although he was sticking close enough to Rudy and the gun that he'd actually stepped on his heels a couple of times already.

The cabins were all empty, as was the camp mess. Their worst moment was in one of the shower blocks, when a squirrel ran across the tiled floor as they opened the door. Mike yelled in his surprise and dropped his baseball bat, but luckily Rudy wasn't startled into shooting one of their precious remaining rounds of ammunition though he swung the barrel wildly towards the squirrel at first. The kitchens were stocked and empty, the technology and art rooms equally bare of people, living or dead. Rudy checked boxes and cupboards, muttering under his breath from time to time.

"Just the camp director's building left," said Rudy, as they headed towards the final, two-storey building.

Mike had begun to relax. "You don't think the wildlife is infected?" he said, listening to the birds chirping in the trees, the odd rustle in the undergrowth as they passed through the small wood that separated the camp from the warden's home. "I'd hate to get eaten by a zombie beaver."

"The virus is unique to homo-sapiens," Rudy replied, ghosting silently along the path. Mike stumbled along beside him, pretty sure he was spoiling any possible attempt at stealth by making enough noise for four people.

"How do you even _know_ this stuff?" Mike said. "Not that I'm not grateful, what with you rescuing me and bringing me here, and your parents getting the rest of my family into the zombie-proof bunker and calling us and everything."

Rudy shrugged. "My grandfather believed in preparing for the apocalypse," he said. "My father keeps up the tradition. In between football tryouts and hockey practice and swim meets he used to make Jeff and I do 'surviving the end of the world' drills."

Mike blinked at him. "Really?" he asked, as they reached the porch of the warden's house.

"We weren't allowed to do boy scouts because my dad felt it prepared us insufficiently for the end times," Rudy said. "Too much do-gooding, not enough rote learning of the ten rules for dealing with extra-terrestrials, he said."

"I wasn't allowed to do scouts because my mother said there was too much sewing involved with the badges and everything, and neither my father nor I could be trusted with a needle," Mike confessed. "What _are_ the ten rules for dealing with aliens?"

Rudy had pushed the front door to the house open. They peered inside cautiously, and then entered. "Are there really only ten...?" Mike continued, when suddenly Rudy shoved him aside. Mike stumbled and fell to the floor, and was about to protest when he heard a sound to make his blood turn cold: the moaning of a zombie.

"Shit!" he said, and jumped to his feet. The zombie was grappling with Rudy now, it's hands wrapped around the shotgun, teeth bared and saliva dripping down its jowly cheeks. "Shit! It's Mr. Warden!"

Rudy kicked the zombie hard in the nuts, and it moaned in an unusually high pitched way for a second, but it did not let go of the gun.

"Shit, shit, shit!" said Mike, and he fumbled about on the floor for the baseball bat. It took a minute of dancing around the zombie to be able to get a clean hit, avoiding Rudy, but finally he was able to take a solid swing at the zombie, striking it cleanly across the spine. There was a horrible crunching noise, and then the zombie fell and lay writhing on the floor. Rudy staggered and fell to one knee, but did not fall on the zombie, which was still reaching for him from the ground. Rudy came up to his feet and then backed away. He took aim, firing at point blank range at the zombie's head.

Mike turned away, running out of the front door again to retch over the side of the porch.

After a minute, Rudy followed. His face was grim, pale and sweating. "Did it get you?" he said, and he heaved Mike upright and pulled up his sleeves, checking for puncture wounds and scratches. Mike stared at him, letting Rudy move him around like a puppet.

Rudy sighed. "You're clean," he said.

"G-good," Mike stuttered, trying not to think what Rudy might have done -- might have had to do -- if he hadn't been. "You? Oh my god, are you? I can't do this without you, I need you, and that one, Mr Warden, he was grabbing at you and..."

He reached out and began to scrabble at Rudy's clothing, running his hands over the thankfully unmarked skin of his arms.

Rudy had a strange expression on his face. "He... It didn't get close enough," he said, his voice hitching in a most un-Rudy-like way.

Mike closed his eyes in relief and slumped into Rudy, breathing into his collar for a moment, astounded when Rudy's arms came up around him for a moment to hold him. Finally, Mike let go, and, feeling calmer but a lot more embarrassed, looked up to meet Rudy's eyes. Rudy was looking at him with an expression that was akin, in another person, to a smile of affectionate relief, although it was only Mike's years of experience that allowed him to interpret the slight twist of Rudy's lips. For a moment Mike felt ludicrously happy, for a person living a zombie-infested nightmare. This was rapidly dispelled by Rudy's next words:

"We have to check the rest of the house," said Rudy. "Are you coming?"

"You're not going anywhere without me," said Mike firmly, and took a deep breath before they went back into the house. He carefully avoided looking at the pool of blood where the zombie formerly known as Mr Warden lay, and concentrated on following Rudy's murmured orders as they moved from room to room. They found nothing, although Rudy liberated an antique gun, some ammunition and a pair of binoculars from Mr Warden's office.

Outside again, the sun shone down on them, and there was no sound except for the gentle swish of water on the shores of the island, the rustle of leaves and the small noises of the local wildlife. Rudy headed over to the mess, and then up a ladder at the back of the building onto the roof. He handed the binoculars to Mike, with instructions to see if he could see the shore, and pulled the ladder up onto the roof after them.

Mike raised his eyebrows. "They can't climb, but better safe then sorry," Rudy said.

Mike nodded, and looked out towards the shore while Rudy used his cellphone to make contact with their parents, holed up with their younger siblings in the bunker at Rudy's house. "At least a month," he heard Rudy say. "Longer if we're careful with food. Who knows how long the cell towers will keep transmitting. Yes, I'll check in again in the morning."

Over on the distant shore, things had changed. A bus stood alongside the dock, not so much parked as abandoned halfway off the road, tilted crazily on the uneven ground. The doors were open, and Mike could see dozens of smaller bodies, clad in the same cheerful camp t-shirts, shuffling among the adults they'd seen earlier.

He shuddered, and set the binoculars down.

"What's the matter?" said Rudy, coming to sit beside him and picking up the binoculars.

After a moment he set them down as well. Mike wiped at his eyes.

"What did your dad say?" he asked, when he thought he could control his voice.

Rudy looked at his hands. "Stay put," he said. "He thinks two, maybe three weeks before we can try to get home."

Mike cleared his throat. "Three weeks," he said, and Rudy nodded.

The silence stretched out between them. Without the binoculars, Mike could just about see the shape of the bus, the shifting mass of blue t-shirted zombies were an undifferentiated blob in the distance.

"We'll make it, right?" he whispered. "Three weeks, we can keep going that long, right?"

Rudy put an arm around him, and tugged him closer. Mike half turned, tucking himself into Rudy's side, and Rudy's other arm came up to hold him. "I wouldn't want to try with anyone else," he said, his voice low too, even though there was nobody around to hear them.

"Are there ten rules for zombies?" Mike said.

"Twelve," Rudy said, his arms closing tighter around Mike. "I'll teach you."


	2. Bruno & Boots

When people told Boots that summer school was going to be hell they really had _no idea_ how right they were. He and Bruno and about a third of the rest of the guys had come back for a special two week session. Apparently it was going to help their college applications, but right now Boots was second guessing that whole college thing altogether if it meant sweltering through lit classes when there was a perfect summer outside. Bruno, of course, was convinced that summer school was the end of the world, and said as much at every mealtime and between every class.

The first inkling they got that, for once, the world really _was_ crumbling around them was when Elmer hammered on their door at four in the morning.

"Wake up!" Boots heard Elmer shout, "Get up, everybody, get up!"

Bruno sat up in bed, his always-messy hair standing up in comical spikes.

"We don't have much time!" Elmer was yelling now.

"What the hell?" said Bruno blearily. Boots shrugged, and, after picking a t-shirt up off the floor and dragging it on, stumbled over to open the door.

The other guys were opening the doors of their rooms too, and staring at Elmer. Boots couldn't blame them. Elmer looked... well, Boots had never seen Elmer look like that ever. He'd never seen anyone look like that ever.

Bruno came to stand at his shoulder. "Elmer, seriously, this is not the time for an existential crisis," he said, leaning his head on Boots' shoulder and yawning.

Elmer reached out and grabbed his arm. "Bruno," he said, and his voice was terrifying, choked with horror. "Bruno, you have to help me. We have to get everyone out of here. Now. We have to go now."

There was a burst of chatter from the rest of the hallway, but Bruno said nothing, just stood up straight and stared at Elmer.

Elmer looked back at him, and Boots really never thought he could be _frightened_ of Elmer, but he was, very, very frightened of the expression of Elmer's face. The crowd quietened down.

"Bruno. Remember we had that conversation once, about my end of the world scenarios, and you said, if... when I saw it coming I should tell you, and you would help me save the human race?" Elmer said.

Boots felt a shock run through Bruno, but all he said was: "Yeah."

"Well, okay," Elmer said, and he seemed to back away from the edge of insane terror for a moment. "Now. Now is when we need to save the human race. Or as many people as we can."

Bruno took a deep breath. "You're sure?" he asked.

Elmer nodded grimly. "It's already started. It's biological, and it's deadly," he said. "Miller, I told you about him, he was the man who helped me refine my predictive models, he e-mailed me earlier to confirm that his models are saying the same thing as mine are. Bruno, we need to leave. His son has a safe place, we need to head out there, I've got the co-ordinates."

Bruno stood very still for a moment and then, in a surge of authority that Boots would look back on for the rest of his life with awed pride, he turned to the rest of the boys of Dorm Three, who were still milling about in the corridor, looking puzzled and anxious.

"Quiet!" Bruno yelled, even though there wasn't much noise. "Okay, we need to run evacuation scenario one, everybody. We have thirty minutes! Kick off your phone trees, tell your families to stay indoors and lock down! Pack clothes in layers, spare sneakers, underwear and socks. No more than one personal item each. No books, nothing heavy. Bring your laptops, phones and radios if they're small enough to carry. Flashlights are good, medication you need, anything like that."

He picked out boys in the crowd. "Elmer, go to the Fish, tell him everything you know," he ordered. "Pete, go with him. Wilbur, food. Sydney, medical supplies."

There was already a buzz of activity, boys looking scared but doing what they were told. Boots was suddenly grateful for Bruno's history of insanity, his insistence that everyone needed to know exactly what they were going to do if the world was going to end in a thoroughly horrible way and they only had one chance to survive.

He turned to Boots. "Run as fast as you can to Cathy and Diane," he said. "Tell them evacuation scenario one. Then run to Mikey Smithson in Dorm One and Robert Parry in Dorm Two. Same message. Then come back and pack."

He reached out to touch Boots hand. "Go," he said. "We've got half an hour."

Boots stared at him for a moment, and then he nodded, going back into the dorm room to pull on jeans and sneakers, and then out the window, running as fast he could for Cathy and Diane's room. He was up the drainpipe in seconds, and hammering on the window, not bothering to stay quiet. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, because when Cathy drew back the curtain, he saw they were both up, and Mary Lou was in their room, wringing her hands and looking frightened. The noise from the corridor beyond their room suggested the same scene was playing out here as had taken place over at MacDonald Hall.

"Evacuation scenario one, 30 minutes," Boots gasped out, and Cathy nodded grimly. He let go of the window ledge, and before he even hit the ground he heard her shout: "Evacuation scenario one! Scenario one! Get your go bags ready _now_!"

Boots ran across the highway, which was thankfully empty, and over to Dorm Two. He couldn't remember where Parry lived, so he went in through the main door, and almost tripped over the body on the floor.

It took his mind a moment to process that, to understand that the still shape on the ground was a person, was that guy Geoff Smarts that he and Bruno always made fun of because his name did not match his mental capabilities, was probably dead, from the pool of blood around him and the holes where holes shouldn't be. There were pools of blood further along the corridor, and Boots could see another body lying part way out of dorm room door, just the feet sticking out into the corridor.

Later, he would be glad he didn't scream, not then, anyway. He just backed away and stared, oblivious for a moment of the ticking clock they were trying to beat. His back hit the door.

Suddenly, there was a moaning noise from further down the corridor, and Boots looked up from Geoff to see another kid walking towards him, shuffling towards him. He was in pyjamas, striped blue ones, Boots noticed, and his face was grey and his eyes were glazed and he didn't look alive. Not really. The kid moaned again, and then the sound was echoed by the body on the floor.

"Oh _shit_," said Boots, as the full horror of the situation hit him. He gulped, and grabbed up a lacrosse stick standing by the front door. On the ground in front of him, Geoff was beginning to stir. Boots scrabbled behind him for the door handle and fumbled for a moment before he got through, still holding the lacrosse stick. It was the work of a moment to push it through the door handles, blocking it off. Boots wondered for a moment whether he should have checked if anyone was left alive before he left them in there with those... things, but then he just ran, as hard as he could, to Dorm One.

This time he was much more careful, picking up a baseball bat someone had left outside with their bike and sliding almost silently through the door. This dorm seemed more normal: no bodies, no open doors, no pools of blood.

He hammered on the door marked Smithson. "Mikey," he yelled. "Evacuation scenario one!"

Mikey came to the door a second later. "What?" he said, rubbing his face with his hands. He looked at Boots again, and then seemed to focus. "What's up? You look terrible."

"There's. Dorm Two," Boots said, incoherently. "We need to do evacuation scenario one. Dorm three is already going. The girls are moving out too. We need to go. There's no time. We're meeting in thirty, no, twenty-five minutes."

MIkey stared at him open-mouthed. "Are you serious?" he said, disbelievingly. "Wait, what about Dorm Two?"

Boots leaned his head against the wall. "It's already here," he said. "Dorm Two. It's too late. Keep everyone away from there for now."

Mikey's face registered his horror. "Are you sure?"

Boots nodded, swallowing hard.

Mikey looked at him, then nodded slowly. He turned back into his room and picked up a huge bell, like the ones they used to call the end of recess at Boots' elementary school. "Evacuation!" he called as he rang the bell. "Scenario one! Keep away from Dorm Two! Evacuation!"

Doors were already opening when Boots nodded to Mikey and then ran.

He came back in through the main doors of Dorm Three to find organization well underway, Bruno directing the madness as always. Elmer was just finishing a report. "The teachers that are left are going into the old bunker under the school," Elmer was saying. "The Fish. He. I... His wife is gone. He had to... He's not really very coherent right now. He gave me a gun to give to Bruno."

In some tiny, detached corner of his mind, Boots found himself wondering what he would have made if he could have placed a bet on the Fish _ever_ handing a firearm voluntarily to Bruno Walton.

Elmer was speaking again. "Dorm Two may be compromised already. Davy Roberts came back today from his uncle's funeral. I think he brought it with him. Mrs. Sturgeon went to talk to him, see how he was coping."

His face was grey. It paled even further when Boots nodded. "It's too late," he said. "I locked them in, but. It's not safe."

"Did anyone touch you?" Elmer asked, hastily, taking a step back from Boots.

Boots shook his head. "Nowhere near," he said. "I didn't even step in any of the blood."

Elmer nodded, and seemed to relax. "Only the first infected will be active, if Mr Sturgeon's estimates of the timeline are correct. The remainder have a period of... dormancy, I suppose, until they become a threat, and it takes a considerable number to break through even relatively flimsy protections as they have nothing but brute strength. No cunning, no logical thought patterns, no sense of self-preservation. They will merely fling themselves at an obstacle until it breaks down."

He turned to Bruno. "We have a little time to continue the orderly retreat," he said.

Bruno's jaw clenched, but he just touched Boots' arm again and turned to face the group. "Keep away from Dorm Two," he shouted. "Be ready to assemble at the cannon in twenty minutes!"

He turned back to Elmer and Boots, and tilted his head meaningfully towards the dorm room. "Do we need to torch this place behind us?" he asked.

Elmer shook his head. "It's too late to deploy a containment strategy," he said, pushing up his glasses. "Burning the animate corpses here will do little. It's more important that we get to safety."

Boots thought Bruno looked relieved. No matter what people thought of Bruno Walton, he really did love his school. Zombies notwithstanding, it would hurt to burn down the school as they left. "Okay," was all he said though. "You two, start packing. Elmer, grab anyone you need to help you get your stuff together."

"What are you going to do?" Boots asked, already pulling his rucksack down from the top shelf of the closet.

In any other circumstance there would have been a gleam in Bruno's eyes, and Boots couldn't have sworn that there wasn't one now. "I'm going to liberate a school bus," he said.

Boots stared at him, then handed him the baseball bat. "Be careful," he said, and watched as Bruno slung it onto his shoulder, gave him a sloppy salute, and wheeled away, calling for Mark, who everyone knew had been driving his dad's tractor since he was about twelve.

* * *

The next forty-five minutes were frantic, though Boots couldn't help looking out the windows every few seconds for signs of movement outside.

Bruno had come back to say they'd parked the bus at the gathering point -- not coincidentally the furthest point on campus away from Dorm Two -- and smiled at Boots when he found his own bag packed for him. "You need your personal item," Boots told him.

"You're coming with me, right?" Bruno said, and tried to smile.

Boots nodded jerkily, and Bruno turned away. He patted the wall above his bed, picked up his bag and put it on his back, and then stood for a moment, leaning his forehead against the doorjamb. "We'll be back," Boots heard him whisper, and then he walked out the door. Boots shouldered his own bag, and followed, shutting the door behind him.

In the corridor boys were lined up, their expressions frightened and grim, wearing their hardest-wearing clothes, all carrying bags.

"Are we ready?" Bruno asked, and everyone nodded. "If you see someone shuffling, if you hear moans, _run_," he said. "Run to the bus. Everyone try to keep up."

"Is it true?" said one boy, his voice trembling. "About Dorm Two?"

Boots nodded. "I'm sorry," he said, knowing the guy had an older brother in the other dorm. The kid nodded, and his friend next to him put an arm over his shoulder.

"Let's go," said Bruno, and the headed out the door, Bruno holding a gun, Boots holding his baseball bat. It had started to lighten up a little outside, a murky pre-dawn light, and Boots could just make out, in the distance, the blob of the school bus and a milling crowd. He flicked on his headlight torch that, despite Bruno's mockery, was really useful when he ran in the early morning.

"We're the last," Boots said, as they started to walk quickly towards the bus, everyone glancing around warily as they marched.

"We had to get the food and other equipment," Bruno said.

Boots looked at him. "What kind of other equipment?" he asked. "How did you even plan all this so quickly?"

Bruno raised his eyebrows, and handed over a small exercise book. Boots angled his headlight torch to read the title Bruno had scrawled on the cover. "How to save us all from Zombies," he read.

"I have all the others with me," Bruno said, proudly.

Boots stared at him. "You know, I'm not even going to ask," he said, after a moment.

"I always said you were the smart one," said Cathy, as they approached.

Any answer Boots might have given was cut off by Bruno's sharp question: "Where are the others?"

Boots looked around. Bruno was right. There were fewer girls there than there should have been."

Cathy's expression was dark. "They didn't believe us," she said. Diane wrapped a comforting arm around her. "They decided to stay. They think it's safe."

"It's already here, it's too late," said Boots, despairingly. "They won't survive."

Cathy closed her eyes. "I couldn't convince them," she said. "I couldn't. I tried."

Diane hugged her closer, murmuring something. Boots waited until she opened her eyes again. "I'm sorry," he said, and she dipped her chin in acknowledgement.

"Save who we can," said Bruno, finally, and then stepped away from their little group. "All aboard! Everyone, on the bus, no shoving."

The movement onto the bus was pretty orderly. Boots counted them on. All fifteen of the guys from Dorm Three and seventeen from Dorm One. Fourteen Scrimmettes where there should have been closer for forty. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. There were plenty of seats, even with the back seats loaded down with boxes and bags.

People were still sitting down when they heard a huge crash from back on the campus, and in the dim light they could see figures begin to emerge from the doors of Dorm Two.

"They've emerged from the dormant period," Elmer said.

"Oh God," said Boots. "Go, Mark, go, go go!"

Mark, startled and pale, hit the lever to shut the bus doors, and, with a horrible grinding of gears, headed out. Further back in the bus, the boy whose brother was in Dorm Two was crying quietly.

"Where are we going?" Boots asked, as he came to sit down next to Bruno.

Bruno looked at him. Boots paused. "You do actually have a _plan_, don't you?" he said

Bruno made an offended face. "Of course I do. First, we have to go steal a boat though. Or maybe several boats, given our current numbers. Here, it's all on page four."

He handed the exercise book to Boots, who obediently opened it to page four. In huge letters across the middle of the page it read: ZOMBIES CAN'T SWIM!

Boots closed the book, and handed it back to Bruno without saying a word.

Mark clashed the gears again as he took the corner from the end of the school driveway onto the highway, and they drove past the front of the school, towards the river. Bruno's face was gilded by light as the sun came up behind the school buildings.


	3. Bugs & Adam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this years ago but didn't realize chapter three never made it onto AO3. There is more, actually -- I have about another 7k words -- but it's not finished.

Adam collapsed onto the fallen log next to Bugs and let out a huge sigh. Bugs, who had been pensively beating out a soft rhythm on a hollow section of the log, stopped and looked up at him. Adam smiled, wearily. Everyone else in their straggling group of survivors looked like they'd been through a war; Bugs looked more or less the same as he always did, maybe a little dirtier was all. His hair was crazy, his t-shirt beaten up and stained, his jeans had a dozen holes in them, but you couldn't blame that on zombies. He'd arrived at band camp looking pretty much the same, fresh from his suburban home.

"Something up?" Bugs said now, looking curiously down at himself to see what Adam was looking at. 

Adam shook his head. "No," he said. "Well, yes, if you count the whole of the woodwind section getting poison ivy again. We've only got one bottle of calamine left. I told them to try to eke it out."

Bugs nodded. "I don't think we can stay much longer," he told Adam. "So maybe they won't get it again."

Adam looked at him in concern. "You think they're coming this way?" he said, looking around nervously.

"Something up with the birds," Bugs said, tapping thoughtfully on the log again with his drumsticks. "They seem to know first. Can hear it in their calls."

"Okay," said Adam. Bugs was just about the last person he'd expect to notice something as subtle as birdsong, but he hadn't steered them wrong yet. The one time anyone had argued with him, it hadn't ended well. Besides, thought Adam, even if his preferred music was a non-stop barrage of over-loud guitars and whiny vocals, Bugs _was_ the most musical person that Adam had ever met. Maybe it wasn't so surprising. 

Bugs had his head tipped to one side now, as if to hear better, and when he met Adam's eyes again he nodded. "We need to move at dawn," he said. 

"I'll tell everyone," Adam said, and rose tiredly to his feet. "We'll look and see where we can head to next tonight after dinner."

"Awesome," said Bugs, and went back to drumming.

** 

Three of the younger kids started to cry when Adam said they had to move on in the morning, big silent tears that tracked down their faces even as they nodded. Adam tried to smile at them, and they tried valiantly to smile back, but on the whole Adam was glad to leave them to clutch at one another while he pored over the maps, trying to find somewhere safe to move their camp. They were limited by their transport, which was a motley collection of camp-quality two- and one-man kayaks, canoes, a bigger rowboat towing an inflatable dinghy and a smaller boat with both oars and an engine that he and Bugs commanded. They were also limited by the stamina of the fifteen kids in the group, and there was only so much Bugs and Adam and the two other older kids in the group could do to keep everyone moving at the same pace.

The band camp had been lucky. News of the Plague, which is what the media was apparently calling it (to Adam's peevish, pedantic irritation) had reached the camp before the Plague itself. The camp itself was in a sort of pre-season with only the camp counsellors and some kids from a local youth orchestra in residence. The camp director decided they could fix up the one stone building on the site, bundle everyone in and see if they could ride it out inside. It was going to be horrible, Adam could see that already: not enough space, not enough water, not enough anything, but it was better than dying. He gave silent thanks for the fact that camp wasn't full, and then nearly threw up when he realized that the kids who were meant to be heading out to join the camp next week were probably mostly dead by now.

Adam and Bugs were in the middle of nailing wooden shutters over the windows of the refuge when a yellow school bus pulled up on the edge on their site.

They exchanged horrified looks. "Go tell the director," Bugs said, and hefted his hammer like a weapon.

Feeling sick, Adam ran inside, yelling for Marty, the head of the camp. When they came back outside, Bugs and the bus driver were in a stand-off, Bugs holding the guy at bay some fifty feet from the camp buildings.

"We're not infected!" yelled the bus driver. "We never made it to town. Once I saw.... I saw a woman walking along the street with her intenstines trailing behind her, I turned back. I couldn't take them any closer."

"Who are they?" Bugs yelled back, still holding the hammer. Adam wasn't sure what good it would do. For all his admiration of Bugs' wiry, percussion player's strength, the bus driver was a huge, athletic looking guy.

"Kids, little kids," the bus driver said, sounding desperate. "Listen, you have to help me, I can't just leave them."

For the first time, Adam looked past the driver at the bus itself. Little faces peered at him from the windows. He was grateful he couldn't see details. "How many?" he called, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. "How many kids?"

The bus driver looked between him and Marty and Bugs. "Fifteen," he said. "They're six, mostly. Grade one."

He looked ready to cry. So did Marty when Adam risked a glance over at him. Adam remembered the photo on the camp director's desk, the two little girls with braids and identical gap-toothed smiles. 

Bugs had allowed his hammer to drop. They all stared at each other.

"I can't leave them, I have to get them somewhere safe," the bus driver said again. "You've got to help me. Please."

And slowly, slowly, Bugs turned and stared at Adam, and Adam felt his insides turn to stone. And even though every single thing inside him was screaming no, gibbering with fear, he heard himself say: "Yes."

**

It was deathly silent in the woods when they slid the boats into the water at dawn. The youth orchestra woodwind kids were still itchy and pink, scratching at themselves miserably under their lifejackets as they assembled in their water craft. They had the routine down now, after the first few days of fumbling and bags dropped in the water and minor collisions. The rowboat, manned by a tuba player and a guy who played the double bass, the strongest in the group, bobbed low in the water, towing the inflatable packed carefully with their supplies. 

Adam, helping to launch some of the youngest kids in their canoe, was grimly aware that there wasn't a single bird singing in the woods. He shuddered. "Paddle," he whispered fiercely at the kids in the canoe. "Get out into the current."

They nodded seriously, their faces pale with cold and fear, and struck out towards the kayaks already floating mid-stream. 

Bugs was doing a last check of their former camp, grabbing a penknife that had dropped out of someone's bag, kicking dust over the remnants of the tiny fire they'd risked last night. He was just heading towards the boat when they both heard it, a soft uneven shuffling noise, and then a low, wordless moan. Bugs' eyes widened, and he cast a horrified glance at Adam. He broke into a sprint, running for Adam and the last couple of boats. Adam was shoving the last kayaks off as hard as he could, the kids inside paddling like crazy to get away from the shore, sending cold water cascading over him. He bit back a yell.

Bugs arrived at the edge of the water just as Adam pushed off the final small boat, leaping into their own boat and manning the oars. Adam pushed off as hard he could, splashing up to his knees into the water and then flinging himself inside. He pulled himself upright just in time to see a figure break out of the gloom of the trees and begin to shuffle towards them. It was wearing some kind of uniform, maybe a park ranger uniform, Adam thought, half-hysterically, but whoever it had been was gone now, and all that was left was shambling death, oozing blood from half a dozen gaping wounds. It moaned.

"Adam, dude, Adam," Bugs said, and Adam tore his eyes from the zombie to meet Bugs' terrified expression. "We're not moving!"

Adam stared at him, and then looked around frantically. Bugs was right. They'd managed to move a few feet away from the river bank, but they weren't getting away, even though Bugs was pulling at the oars. Adam stood, rocking the boat wildly, and almost fell towards the bow of the boat. The painter, the rope they used to tie the boat up, in his hurry he'd let it trail into the water and now it seemed to be caught on something out of sight under the water. 

"Shit, shit," he said. "Bugs! Give me that knife!" 

He turned back to look at Bugs, who made the boat rock again digging into his pockets trying to get the knife. Adam stared at him. Behind Bugs, their little flotilla of band campers was holding formation mid-stream, some of them looking like they were going to break ranks and paddle over. "Stay there!" Adam yelled at them. "Stay away!"

Bugs finally got the knife out of his pocket and slapped it into Adam's hand, grabbing up the oars again. "Adam, hurry," he said, breathlessly.

The zombie, which apparently didn't like water, moaned again. It was staring at the water, and even as Adam began to saw at the rope, it began to edge in, stopping when its feet were wet and shuddering. 

The rope was tough, and Adam's knife was not very sharp. He was sobbing, chanting, "Come on, come on, oh please, _come on_!" to himself as he tried to cut the line. The zombie began to advance again.

"Hurry, fuck, Adam, hurry!" Bugs was saying, and Adam was torn between yelling at him that he _was_ hurrying and trying to speed up his movements. The zombie began to reach out, flailing its arms towards Adam. He jerked back, still holding the rope, and that was apparently just enough extra force to snap the last few threads, and they skimmed a few feet further into the river, away from the grasping zombie. It moaned, an animal cry of frustrated hunger.

Bugs began to row, sending Adam falling onto his back in the boat. In seconds, they were out among the other small boats, bobbing mid stream. Bugs urged them all to set off paddling, breathing harshly as he rowed. Adam lay panting on his back and stared up at the sky. The sky was a pale morning blue, and the sun had risen fully in the sky. Adam stared up at it and wondered how many others there were left who could still put a name to the sun.

**

They moored at the base of a steep cliff that night, on a tiny pebbly beach. They didn't have a plan, not really, but they were making steady progress down the St Lawrence, headed out of Ontario. They had to do something, and it wasn't safe to stay anywhere very long.

"No access here unless they fall on us," Bugs said, performing a drum roll on an empty cylinder of oats. "Or they're the amazing Flying Zombies! Awesome band name."

Adam grinned at him and rolled his eyes. "I'm going to put a new painter on our boat," he told Bugs.

"I'll check the radio," Bugs replied. "Hey, maybe there'll be some music."

Adam shrugged at him, and moved away. Bugs hadn't given up the idea that somehow, everything was going to get back to normal one day, that they were going to turn on the radio one evening and hear a voice saying, come on home, it's all over, it's safe now, come back. And then maybe some music by Pickled Spleen, or whoever it was that Bugs had been raving over that day before the news of the Plague came to the camp. 

Adam stared down at his hands as he tied a new piece of rope to the boat he and Bugs used -- they'd managed to scrounge some from a dock they'd passed this morning, as well as a small tank of gas. 

It wasn't that he didn't want to hear that the Plague was over, Adam thought, fumbling with a nautical knot that Jerry, the tuba player and thankfully life long boating enthusiast, had taught everyone. It was more than he was too chicken to listen as the radio stations they'd managed to find gradually stopped broadcasting even their State of Emergency messages and faded into static.

He was just done tying the knot when he heard a shout from Bugs. "Adam! Come here! You have to hear this!"

Adam looked up. "Bugs, if you've managed to find someone broadcasting your favourite band," he said, threateningly, as he strolled over to where Bugs was sitting. Some of the rest of their group had come over, and they all turned astonished and happy faces to Adam as he approached. Adam, seeing this, broke into a jog. "What?" he said. "What did you find?"

Bugs help up the radio, turning up the volume. Everyone was sitting up now, turning towards the radio. 

"_Fellow Canadians, fellow survivors. This is the voice of Camp Hope,_" the voice on the radio said, "_We're broadcasting this message on every local frequency we can find, so if you can hear us, you're no more than 10 miles away, according to our technical experts, anyway. Camp Hope is an island, plague free. It's a place of safety. The co-ordinates will repeat after this. Look on maps for a small island three miles out of Jonesville, it may be marked as Camp Algonkian Island. That's Camp Hope._" The message paused, and then a set of co-ordinates were read out, and then repeated several times.

Adam stared at the radio, dumb-founded. 

"We're not the only ones left!" Bugs shouted, and the rest of the group took up the shout, screaming and crying and slapping one another on the back. Two kids had pulled out their maps and navigation equipment and were already pointing excitedly at it.

Adam just stared. "We don't know how long it's been broadcasting," he said, when everyone had caught their breath and the excitement was down to a simmer. "We don't know they're still there."

"I've checked those frequencies every night," Bugs objected.

"We don't know we were in their range before now," Adam said.

The kids nearest Adam began to mutter, fear creeping back into their eyes. "I want it to be true," Adam said, desperately. "I do. But we don't know."

Bugs stuck his chin out. "We have to try," he said, and there was more murmuring.

Everyone stared at Adam. "Yes," he said, but he couldn't make himself say any more than that. 

That night, sitting by the fire on the first watch, Adam stared into the darkness. Bugs sat beside him, but for the first time since they'd first pushed off from the dock at band camp, he wasn't pressed up against Adam's side, sharing warmth and comfort. Bugs' fingers drummed against the knee his jeans. 

"It's more than a day to the camp," Adam said, breaking the silence. "At the pace we can travel, unless some of us go on ahead in the motorboat."

"Stay together until about a mile out and then go on ahead," Bugs suggested. "Risk as few of us as possible."

Adam nodded.

There was a soft noise as one of the kids at the edge of the firelight rolled over in their sleeping bag, and Adam turned to check on them. Sometimes the younger kids had nightmares, and Adam or Bugs would go sit with them, try to keep them quiet and calm them down. This time it seemed to be just someone restless and Adam looked out into the night again. 

"Do you think they're there?" Bugs asked, softly. "At Camp Hope?"

"I want them to be," Adam said, after a pause. He smiled weakly at Bugs. "I don't want it to be left to us to repopulate the earth."

Bugs smirked. "You can't deny our kids would be the _most_," he said, teasingly. "Flute-guy drummers!"


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am abandoning this work unfinished, but before I do so, at some point I wrote the epilogue for this story, which I have tacked onto the end. I don't plan to continue this work -- apologies to anyone who was hoping I would

Camp Hope: Ten Years Of Hope

From the outside, it almost looks like the ten year reunion of a graduating class of an upscale high school. The banner reads "Ten Years Later..." and there are balloons and flowers attached to the reception desk outside a meeting room at a smart hotel in Toronto. Walking towards the foyer where I'll be setting up for the evening, I'm almost expecting to hear a cheesy music mix of decade-old classics. The impression lasts until I see the name badges lined up neatly on the desk where I pick up my press credentials. These are names to conjure with, the legends of their generation: they are the names of the survivors of Camp Hope. 

There are many stories of the Plague; of survival, self-sacrifice and courage. None are as well-known or as well documented as that of the survivors of Camp Hope, not least because among their number are the developers -- and perhaps more crucially, the publishers -- of the cure to the Drimsdale-Beakman Paradox Disease, more commonly known as the Plague. 

Simply put their story is this: when the Plague broke out, several groups of young men and women, driven by a shared desire to survive, came together on a small island in the Saint Lawrence river, a safe haven of sorts. They called it Camp Hope. It turned out to be an apt name: it was at Camp Hope that the cure was found, and it was from Camp Hope the message was spread across Canada and the United States that humanity would survive on the American continents. It is a measure of how quickly they acted, how quickly Canada, with the help of these courageous young people, has bounced back from the worst biological catastrophe since the Great Plague itself, that this reunion can take place at all. There are days when it seems a miracle that there are still hotels and name badges and balloons in the world. Without Camp Hope, perhaps there would not be.

Today, the children of Camp Hope are adults, many of them in prominent, influential positions. This is the first time any press access has been granted to their annual reunion, although I have been told firmly that I will not admitted to the reunion itself, and may only speak to participants as they arrive and socialize outside the room. I hover nervously near the reception desk as the attendees begin to filter in.

As it happens, Marylou Drimsdale-Beakman is among the first to arrive at the reunion, along with fellow scientist and husband Elmer. "We see some of them everyday," Marylou tells me wryly as she picks up her badge and pins her husband's to his jacket. He is silent, apparently lost in thought. "We babysit each other's kids. I live next door to some of them. It's not much of a reunion when you kicked them out of your house for waking the baby three hours ago."

She nods pointedly at the badges for Boots O'Neal and Bruno Walton as she says this, but she is laughing. "We are a close knit group," she says, when I ask her whether most people at the reunion are already regular visitors at their homes and workplaces. "There are a few who live further away, though, and these days we all have busy lives so we don't always see as much of one another as maybe we'd like."

She pauses. "Of course, today is as much about remembrance as togetherness, and there are some who will never be with us again," she says, and with a polite smile she leads her husband away and into the meeting room, where they are embraced enthusiastically by the few who have already arrived.

Over the next quarter hour, more people arrive. There are joyful shouts as they are drawn into the room. Three teenagers arrive together, looking anxious. "I've never dared come before, though they always invite us," one of the girls, Sarah Miles, tells me, and looks with trepidation at the door to the meeting room. Her friends are Louise Finch and Mei-Xing Lee. They are all seventeen, Miles celebrating her birthday just last week.

They were not at Camp Hope. They were on the bus that Raul Rodriguez, a former Army Sergeant, famously drove up to the summer music camp where eighteen year old David 'Bugs' Potter and Adam Webb were working. The arrival of fifteen small, defenceless children forced Webb and Potter into a terrible decision: to give up their places in the limited space of a safe building to save the first graders and strike out on their own into certain danger. They were ultimately to lead thirteen other children in a collection of small water craft to Camp Hope. 

"There's nobody in the world I'm closer to than the kids who were on that bus," Miles says. "Mark [Washington, another survivor from the bus] came last year, and he said it meant a lot to him to hear what they had to say. We decided to come together this year, to meet the people who gave us a chance to live. We would have never made it without them. We were too young."

The other two girls nod, but it seems even together they cannot gather the courage to enter the room. "I've always felt guilty," Lee confesses suddenly. I wonder if this is the first time she has said it out loud. "Some of the children who left because of us were only eleven. At the time they seemed so grown-up to me, but only three of them were older than I am now. I don't know if I were in that situation now that I would be able to make that decision."

While they try to work up the nerve to go in, a man arrives and approaches the desk. While he is pinning his badge to his sweater, the hotel manager, who has taken over the job a receptionist would ordinarily do and is running the welcome desk, murmurs something to him, pointing to the girls. He comes over to speak to them. 

His badge reads 'Adam Webb'.

It is too much for Finch, who has been on the edge of tears since they arrived, and she begins to cry, almost collapsing to the floor under the weight of her emotions. Webb catches her, and they all move away to sit on a small sofa in an alcove nearby, Webb holding the distraught girl close and rocking her soothingly. His partner, Bugs Potter, arriving moments later, sizes up the scene in moments. "The bus survivors?" he asks the hotel manager, who nods, and he seems to sigh, and moves to sit on the edge of a table where he can watch over Webb. 

"Adam's the best person for them to cry on," he tells me with a grin. "He can make anyone feel better."

I ask him if this happens a lot. "At reunion, sure," he says, shrugging. "Everyone cries at reunion. You're lucky if you make it an hour without welling up."

Later, when I am back in my hotel room, I reflect on how right Potter is. These are only the first tears of the night. "People want to forget, move on, and I can understand that," someone tells me at one point, describing how one of the speakers, now a well-known public figure, was unable to finish a short speech during the reunion, her voice robbed by the force of her emotions. "We get together because we still want to remember, and grieve, and celebrate together."

Back at the reception desk, new arrivals show no surprise at the storm of emotion on display in the alcove, focussing instead on greeting Potter, passing on messages and good wishes. It seems the Potter-Webb household has some new additions. "One of our sons wanted a puppy," Potter tells me, in a moment between hugs and reunions. "We ended up getting two so that they could be company for one another."

The girls from the bus leave to wash away their tears in the ladies room, and Webb joins us. He rolls his eyes. "You ended up getting two," he corrects Potter. Then he shrugs philosophically and says: "Well, the kids love them anyway."

I find myself sharing my tips for house-training puppies, Webb carefully jotting notes on a piece of paper he unearths from behind the reception desk. After a few minutes I stop, wondering how I suddenly found myself caught up in the very domestic concerns of two of Canada's heroes.

Webb smiles at me. "It's the Bugs effect," he says. "The kids love it at parents night. Their teachers start out telling us about their grades and then they find they've spent the whole interview talking about plumbers."

I ask about their children. "We collect them," Adam says, already pulling out photos. He refuses to show them to me unless I promise not to share their names in my article. They have six children, ranging in age from fourteen to two, all adopted, though all but one have retained their birth names. "It was a crazy thing to do," Webb acknowledges. "We were barely adults ourselves when we brought our oldest to live with us. But there was so much chaos, so many kids in need, what else could we do when we found someone we could help?"

Webb has of course very publicly expressed his belief that for his part, he was merely lucky to have fallen in with the creators of Camp Hope. He, like many of the former residents of Camp Hope, has turned down honours and accolades for what they achieved, vehemently denying any personal heroism or courage. He laughs at the idea of them as modern legends. "Bugs, maybe," he says. "He's a rock legend. I'm just a music teacher."

As I watch, the three teenaged bus survivors return from the bathroom and allow Potter and Webb to lead them into the meeting room. I do not know what definition of courage Webb uses, because this man who gave up his own safety for the defenceless, who fills his home with some of Canada's lost children just because he can, should surely be the picture right beside it.

"He's sorry he couldn't save us from it all, I guess," Catherine Wells tells me. She was one of the children who joined Webb and Potter when they left the music camp, and she has arrived at the reunion in a final trickle of attendees. "He doesn't get that it's enough that he saved us from any of it."

I ask her what made her decide to join them when they asked for volunteers. "I was thirteen," she says, rolling her eyes. "I had a huge crush on Bugs."

She laughs at this now. "Just as well I got over that!" she says, cheerfully. "He and Adam were together even then, of course, though they kept it pretty quiet."

When I ask her what she remembers most clearly about their flight across Ontario, the days at Camp Hope, she has to think. "Mostly, you know, it's all just a fog of terror," she says, after a while. "But there are two things. I couldn't seem to keep out of the poison ivy, and Adam would come round the camp with his bottle of calamine and swab everyone down. It was so weirdly normal. And the other thing is of course when we arrived at Camp Hope, and I saw all the other kids already there. That was the first moment after we left the music camp that I really thought we might survive."

"Who could think anything else with me there?" a voice interrupts, and Wells shrieks and flings herself at the newcomers. They greet her effusively, and introduce themselves to me, though they have no need to do so, as Bruno Walton and Boots O'Neal.

"Babysitter issues," says O'Neal, picking up his badge, as people crowd around and ask why they are late.

His voice is eerily familiar. Although I have never met him before and, unlike his partner, O'Neal has mostly stepped back from public life in the years since the Plague, there must be few Canadians who do not feel this way when they hear him speak. As the communication networks began to fail, Camp Hope Radio took over the airwaves, and Boots O'Neal became their voice: his broadcasts were a lonely ray of light for many of those who, like my family, were hiding in dark basements and praying for an end to terror.

I tell him how much it meant to me to listen to him on the radio, and he blushes and toes the ground bashfully. Walton laughs at him. "I keep telling him he should take one of the broadcasting jobs they keep offering," he tells me, but O'Neal shakes his head. He claims to be happy teaching kindergarten and taking care of their kids. 

"I think it would frighten people to hear me on the radio again," he says, and even as I deny it I can't help wondering if he is right. Hearing his voice now reminds me viscerally of the past, of the stifling heat of the basement, the grim rationing of food and water, of my mother's despair at what seemed the growing certainty of our death. O'Neal touches my arm gently to nudge me from my introspection, and waits patiently for me to collect my thoughts before I ask about his family.

He and Walton also blame Webb for their complicated household, their children a rainbow mix of ethnicity, age and personality. "He called us and told us that he needed a temporary place for a kid to stay. Six years later, that kid is still with us," Walton tells me. He seems unconcerned. "I think he's trying to re-home all the lost kids of Canada with the Camp Hope families."

There are murmurs of agreement from the people still gathered around the couple and I am suddenly surrounded by people who want to tell me about the antics of the O'Neal/Walton household. "My chickens have come home to roost," Walton says, with mock dismay, as more than one story is told where he is the punchline. "I was a hell brat and now I know why it turned my parents grey prematurely."

You can still see a glimmer of that hell brat in Walton now, though he has turned much of his relentless drive into his political goals. In person, he is as personable and charismatic as his political supporters claim, and not as shallow or arrogant as his detractors would have us believe. And he's no political puppet of the establishment, his friends are quick to assure me.

"He doesn't pretend to know everything," one of his former school friends and fellow Camp Hope residents says later. "What he does know is who to ask for advice, how to bring people together for a common cause, and how to organise support. You only have to look at the people he gathers around him, the people he turns to for help. He's his own person, not some stooge whose popularity can be bought by the highest bidder. If he agrees with someone politically it's because he supports their position."

Another Camp Hope survivor added: "He'd have done this anyway. Camp Hope just gave him a platform, a head-start maybe. Besides, if anyone is the power behind Bruno's throne it's Boots. He's the only one of us who can consistently make Bruno see reason."

Back at the reunion, a quiet word from the hotel manager triggers a general move into the meeting room, and the doors close gently on Walton calling for a moment of silence for all those who were lost. The final pair arrive late, just as I am sitting down to await the end of the meeting and write up some notes. Michael Webster, now a researcher at the same facility as the Drimsdale-Beakmans, and his partner Rudy Miller turn up twenty minutes after the doors close. Miller declines to speak to me, and vanishes silently into the meeting room. Little is known of Miller, who refuses all interviews. Even the other members of Camp Hope seem reluctant to speak of him. The rumours about him hint at a career shrouded in deliberate mystery. 

Webster, by contrast, is cheerful and talkative, telling me they were delayed by their discovery a mile from home that his youngest daughter had stowed away in the back seat of their car. They too, it seems, have taken it upon themselves to house some of Canada's lost children. He says, however, that not everyone has adopted. "In fact, that's why Cathy [Burton] and Diane [Grant] aren't here tonight. Cathy's just about ready to pop and she didn't want to risk going into labour in the midst of this crowd. Not that it stopped her going to court yesterday," he tells me as he pins his name tag to his chest.

I suggest that very little would stop Burton and Grant from being in court for the outcome of the criminal case related to the release of the Paradox virus. Now lawyers themselves, they have also represented the interests of the Camp Hope survivors, initially with the help of Grant's father, another lawyer, ever since the Plague was brought to an end. He agrees. "She's just mad that she couldn't drink any of the champagne!"

He pushes the door open and peers diffidently around it, to be greeted by a cry of recognition and welcome. The door closes with a click behind him.

There are very few name tags left on the table, some of them names I recognize. Raul Rodriguez was expected; I learn later that health problems kept him away. Two other teenagers from the bus survivor group said they would come and in the end stayed away. I wonder whether the stories the three girls inside bring back will encourage them to come next year. 

The hotel manager catches me looking at the tags. "They're all so young in person," she tells me, her voice lowered confidentially. "I don't think I ever realized."

"Where were you when it happened?" I ask her. It's become the question of our generation: what did you do when the dead walked among us? How did you survive?

She shrugs. "In Ecuador," she says. "It never reached us, thank the lord. My family came here when the repopulation incentives were offered."

I nod. "You?" she asks.

"Not far from here, in my basement, praying," I say, and she nods.

"They did more than pray," she says, a note of awe creeping into her voice as she looks at the closed doors of the Camp Hope reunion.

"They did," I agree. "They saved us all."

_Illustrations (clockwise from the top): Marylou and Elmer Drimsdale-Beakman accepting the Nobel Prize on behalf of Camp Hope; Bruno Walton and Boots O'Neal with Catherine Wells at the tenth Camp Hope reunion; Cathy Burton and Diane Grant speaking to the media on the steps of the High Court following the announcement of the landmark Paradox Disease ruling; Adam and David Potter-Webb at the tenth Camp Hope reunion; (centre) the Canadian flag flying at Camp Hope, now a permanent memorial site to Canada's Plague dead._


End file.
